alt Hacker News> Humans who have been writing systems like that for many years know how to maintain and modify them successfully.
Do they??
Replies
danparsonson • today at 2:21 AM
Yeah... in my experience people who code like that 'successfully' make modifications that fix an immediate problem while kicking another bug or two further down the road in a never-ending sunk-cost-fallacy of job security...
jplusequalt • today at 1:15 AM
I believe this type of person exists.
My team lead has worked on the same software for 30 years. He has the ability to hear me discuss a bug I noticed, and then pinpoint not only the likely culprit, but the exact function that's causing it.
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Yes.
There is a lot of absurdly complex software that runs with high reliability. We hear a lot about the ones that don’t.